Elements with patterned anisotropic properties are, for example, known as optical elements, which include a layer comprising polymerized or cross-linked liquid crystals with locally different optical axes directions. Such layers are, for example, prepared by applying cross-linkable liquid crystal materials on top of an alignment layer exhibiting locally different alignment directions. The liquid crystal material adopts the local alignment direction of the underlying alignment layer and is then cross-linked to fix the orientation.
An alignment layer with locally different alignment directions can easily be prepared by the photo-alignment technique, where a layer of a material, which is sensitive to the polarization of light, is exposed to linearly polarized light. Patterned alignment is achieved by changing the polarization direction of the light for the exposure of different regions of the photo-alignment layer. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,375,888, this is done by covering part of the photo-alignment layer by different photo-masks in subsequent exposure steps.
Elements with individually patterned anisotropic properties, such as the optical elements described above, can in principle be produced with the above method by using individual photo-masks with the respective information. However, such a method is hardly applicable for large volume production.